


Cherry Bomb

by reconquer



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: (kind of), Alternate Universe - 1970s, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Alternate Universe - The Runaways, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-12 04:36:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3343886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconquer/pseuds/reconquer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By the time they get to the club it’s already packed. They shove their way to the bar and reluctantly pay for their overpriced drinks. The band is playing so loud that Asami can barely hear herself think and the strobe lights are making her feel way drunker than she actually is. She gets pulled into the crowd and bodies are writhing around her, not touching quite touching her.</p><p>She dances alone. She always does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Helter Skelter

**Author's Note:**

> so i re-watched the runaways recently and so it's loosely based on that but hopefully gayer?  
> tw for reluctant sex in this chapter, i wouldn't call it nonconsensual but it's not very enthusiastic, vague internalized homophobia, and alcohol

“Your dad’s gonna kill you, y’know.”

“I don’t care.”

Asami’s long hair, pulled taught in her hand, makes a _snick_ noise every time she closes her shears around it. She shakes her bangs forward and the lack of hair brushing across her back feels foreign. Bowie’s playing distantly from the radio in her room as she starts lining her lips with red, carefully tracing the outline before putting on her lipstick. She hears Mako pad across her bedroom and into the adjoining bathroom, stopping to stand behind directly behind her.

“What, lookin’ to get laid tonight or something?” He mutters, palming her ass through her panties. She waves him away with one hand and reaches for her eyeshadow with the other.

“Or I could just want to look nice, ever think of that?” She snaps, placing her eyeshadow down and picking up her eyeliner. His arm snakes around her waist and underneath her tank top. He squeezes her, flicks her nipple, but she doesn’t react. He buries his face in her neck.

“Why’d you cut your hair, baby? It was so pretty.”

Asami rolls her eyes and pushes him off of her, taking long strides back to her bedroom. She takes off her tank top and Mako watches her from the doorway of the bathroom. His eyes are burning into her as she rummages through her closet. Asami doesn’t usually date (or whatever this is) but Mako’s a decent fuck and she’s pretty sure he isn’t emotionally attached.

She tosses her clothes onto the bed and suddenly hips are pressed against hips and she can feel his dick against her ass.

“Mako, we have to pick up Bolin and Opal in, like, half an hour.” He nips at her shoulder and slides his hand into her panties. She gasps just loud enough for him to hear.

“It’ll be quick, I promise,” he responds, sliding a condom on that he’d grabbed from the nightstand and nudges her, underwear already askew. She bends over, too turned on and too tired to fight with him anymore. She gasps into the sheets.

“Just don’t mess up my make-up.”

 

She borrows her dad’s Porsche—it’s not one of his nicer cars, so he won’t care that much if it gets trashed in the lot, but it’s still classy enough that they won’t get ID’d or stopped by cops.

Bolin and Opal look nervous as the clamber into the back of her car. They’d both just turned sixteen and Mako had been swearing to his brother up and down for _years_ that he’d bring him to a nightclub once he was old enough. And, well, Bolin isn’t someone who lets people go back on their promises, and he even managed to get his quiet, timid girlfriend to tag along too.

“Here,” Mako twists around and hands Bolin a half-empty bottle of Jack. “The drinks at the place are expensive as shit.” Bolin takes a swig from the bottle and grimaces. He hands it to Opal and she does the same.

All four of them pass the bottle around for the duration of the trip, not really talking, only kind of listening to KLOS play some obscure rock song. The stale California air streams through the windows in ribbons and ennui sits low in Asami’s stomach.

By the time they get to the club it’s already packed. They shove their way to the bar and reluctantly pay for their overpriced drinks. The band is playing so loud that Asami can barely hear herself think and the strobe lights are making her feel way drunker than she actually is. She gets pulled into the crowd and bodies are writhing around her, not touching quite touching her.

She dances alone. She always does.

A hand grabs her wrist and she’s pressed against Bolin’s chest and he’s yelling something about Opal and bathrooms, and suddenly she’s squinting and swaying in an artificially lit hallway in the back of the club. She stumbles towards the nearest door and roughly shoves it open. She’s greeted to the sight of urinals and the most striking girl she’s ever seen with some guy kneeling between her legs. Her hair is short and uneven and her blown pupils are ringed with blue and Asami isn’t sure she can ever stop staring at her.

“Hey, babe,” she says in a low, gravelly voice. “This is the men’s room. Might wanna check next do-or…” She groans and yanks the man’s hair and Asami lets the door swing shut behind her.

The cement wall is cold on her back and the insides of her thighs feel sticky. The image of the girl’s jeans crumpled around her calves and her tits straining against her thin shirt is burned into her mind and Asami is kind of freaking out. She’s a _girl._ She’s can picture herself so well between that girl’s legs, but she’s—

She’s supposed to be looking for Opal. Who is probably puking. In the women’s room.

She darts into the correct bathroom and finds Opal retching against a nasty toilet.

“Hey,” Asami says in a low voice, bending down as steadily as she can. “Can I get you anything?” Opal shakes her head.

“Just stay here.”

“Okay. Is it your first time drinking?”

“Yeah.”

“We probably shouldn’t have given you that Jack in the car then.”

Opal cracks a smile. Asami smooths her hair back and tries not to think about Hot Bathroom Girl and the fact that, sitting in a bathroom that reeks of cigarettes and puke, she’s still turned on.


	2. Search and Destroy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asami can’t stop thinking about her. Every time she sees a leather jacket she jumps and the girl’s hooded, brilliant blue eyes make up her dreams.  
> So she goes back to the bar. Again. And again. And again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll update this as often as i can but i have a really busy schedule this semester!! tw for drug use and shitty parents

Asami can’t stop thinking about her. Every time she sees a leather jacket she jumps and the girl’s hooded, brilliant blue eyes make up her dreams.

So she goes back to the bar. Again. And again. And again.

Most of the time she stands in the corner with a cheap beer and observes the crowd. Sometimes she dances, but she doesn’t want to risk missing her.

She knows it’s a long shot, but it’s the only chance she has. Asami doesn’t know exactly what she’s looking for in this girl, whether it’s a ride out of this desert wasteland, or a fuck, or both, but she wants it. Desperately.

The late nights start catching up to her and dragging herself out of bed for school becomes harder as the days pass. She’s pretty positive she’s lost it when she walks into the kitchen on Friday morning and her father is sitting at the table, calmly drinking coffee and reading the paper as if this sort of thing was normal for them. As if he’d been home _once_ in the past two weeks.

Asami ignores him, giving him a cold one-over and then retrieving a bowl from the cabinet for her cereal.

“You cut your hair,” Hiroshi finally says after Asami has already settled at the table and begun eating.

“Yeah, like, a week ago.”

“You look like a punk. I don’t like it.” Asami hunches over her bowl and resists the urge to punch him.

“School’s good?”

“Yes.”

Hiroshi makes a low noise in his throat and peers at her over his glasses.

“And how’s that boyfriend of yours? Has he been over lately?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she mutters into her cereal. “Besides, why do you care if he’s been over? It’s not like you’re ever here.” She tries not to let the hurt bleed into her words. Hiroshi ignores the comment.

“You’re almost grown, Asami, and I know you kids have sex. I just want you to be safe about—“

The scraping of Asami’s chair cuts him off.

“No. Uh, no. I’m not—we’re not—I’m going to school,” she stutters, placing her bowl in the sink with a little too much force. “I’ll see you later, Dad.”

 

The passenger side door slams and Asami almost drops her cigarette. She knows it’s Mako before she even looks and takes a deep drag.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he says casually, taking a bottle of Coke out of his backpack and twisting it open.

“No, I haven’t,” she responds, blowing the smoke out of her open window.

“I haven’t seen you in, like, a week.”

“More like we haven’t had sex in a week,” she mutters, sinking down into the leather seat and placing the cigarette between her lips. Mako takes a sip of his Coke and says nothing, red creeping up from beneath his t-shirt.

“What happened at that club, Asami? You just seem…off. I’m your friend and I’m worried.”

“Nothing happened, Mako. Just leave it.”

“Come on,” he says, sliding across the bench and putting his can down next to him. “You can tell me.” He plucks the cigarette from her mouth and presses his lips against hers.

She lets him kiss her but doesn’t return it. They part and she turns her head, delicately taking the cigarette from Mako’s fingers and settling it between her teeth.

“I saw my dad this morning.”

“How long has it been?”

“Two weeks this time.”

Mako sighs. Things may be weird between them right now, and he can be a real dick, but he and Asami have been friends for a long time and he knows the gory details of Asami’s home life.

“What was his excuse?” He backs off of Asami, rummaging through his backpack and taking out his lunch. He hands half of his sandwich to Asami and she takes it, putting out her cigarette in the ashtray on the dash.

“He didn’t even give me one,” she says through a mouthful of bread and cold cuts. “Piece of shit.”

“Asami, he’s your _dad_.”

“Then the least he could do is act like it.”

They finish their lunch in strained silence. Asami can already feel a headache settling behind her eyes and when Mako gets out of the car to go back to class, she doesn’t follow him.

 

It’s a Friday and the place is packed and it’s so hot that Asami’s pretty sure she can feel her make-up melting off, but it doesn’t matter, really. The only thing that matters is finding that girl and leaning on the wall behind her so she has something real to hold onto.  Asami’s head is buzzing from the hit she took off some stranger’s joint—being a girl kind of sucks, but showing a little bit of cleavage for free drugs is pretty handy once in while.

This past week has been unsuccessful. Sometimes Asami thinks that she catches a glimpse of her dark skin or choppy, chin-length hair but they always end up belonging to someone else. She’s starting to get discouraged.

The writhing crowd in front of her parts as a tall man with a horseshoe mustache and over-gelled hair makes his way through. Some girls around him giggle and stare but he ignores them and makes a bee-line straight for Asami.

He sidles up _way_ too close and places his hand on the wall behind her, next to her head. She maintains eye contact, trying not to shrink away from him.

“I’ve seen you here before,” he says. His breath smells like stale smoke and beer. Asami hates it. “You look tough. How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.” She spits it out immediately, the lie sliding easily between her teeth.

“Yeah, same,” the man snorts. “I’m Varrick. Iknik Varrick, but everyone just calls me Varrick. I’m the producer for Varrick Studios, you may have heard of me?”

He hands her a business card from his back pocket. Asami takes a quick glance. Of _course_ she’s heard of Varrick Studios, but she can’t let him know that. She slides the card into her halter top but doesn’t say anything. Varrick quirks his eyebrows, lingering on where she put the card and Asami fights the urge to cross her arms.

“I’m trying to do a sort of…experiment. All-girl rock band sorta shtick. You sing?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Oh, wait—Korra!” Varrick leans back off the wall and twists around, making a beckoning motion towards someone in the crowd.

Asami’s heart stops. It’s _her_. Her eyes are bluer than she remembered and she’s wearing these fucking leather jeans and oh, shit, Asami’s too high for this and she’s terrified she’s gonna, like, wet herself or something.

“Hey, who’s this?” Korra’s voice is low and Asami’s pretty sure it’s a million degrees in this club right now. Varrick looks at her expectantly.

“Asami,” she chokes out.

“Asami,” Korra repeats. “I like her look.” She says, turning to Varrick.

“She says she sings,” Varrick answers. Korra nods.

“Nice. Auditions for the band are this Sunday. You got the business card Varrick gave you?”

Asami pulls the card from her shirt and Korra follows the path of her hand, smirking. She pulls a marker from behind her ear and scribbles something on the card, then hands it back.

“I’ll see you then, Asami.”

Korra winks and saunters away and Varrick trails after her, leaving Asami with an almost illegible address written on the card and a stomach knotted with nerves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you wanna say hi my tumblr is sophelstien.tumblr.com :)


End file.
